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When your supervisors told you that you would no longer be making electronics and automobiles but rather howitzers of bone marrow you were told not to question, you shut your mouth and adjusted to the new routine.
When your government asked you to provide for a war against those unprepared and undeserving of battle over differences in opinion and policy, you shrugged your shoulders and gave what you could.
When sirens blared across the country and your peers tried to evacuate to safer lands, only to be threatened with alien weaponry and forced to remain or face death, you locked your doors and turned off all the lights.
When your friends and co-workers were ousted from society and branded as traitors to their country by the media before disappearing from their homes and workplaces, you kept to yourself and burnt all your old photographs.
When your neighbor's house was raided by armed men in black clothing who forced her family into unmarked vans before holding her head to the pavement, you turned up the radio and attempted to drown out the screams and gunfire.
When you saw a crowd of protesters approach two military officials only to have their flesh and bone meld with one another as they were hit with a caustic purple liquid, you turned around and decided it would be better to clean the attic tonight instead.
When all outside communications were silenced after international organizations reported chemical attacks against major cities followed by worldwide casualties, you chose to watch a movie instead and tried to forget what you heard.
When you saw the sidewalk covered in the pulsating meat and gristle, still wailing and crying out for a family with a mouth that no longer existed, you pulled your blinds closed and went to bed early for the night.
When armed soldiers marched the streets followed by bipedal flesh-ridden amalgams, whose pained expressions just barely hinted at a human face, you locked your doors and tried not to make eye contact.
But you, you've never been in danger. That's why then you heard a knock on your door and were told how you would be serving your country, you followed their commands blindly. You did everything you were told, did what you were asked without hesitation.
After all, your country would never betray you, right?
Right?
I’ve always been told that I ‘just must have a guardian angel’.
When I was three years old, there was a big accident. A pickup t-boned my mom’s minivan and I went flying out the side. My booster wasn’t properly fastened in, and I tumbled out and landed in a muddy spot off the road. Completely safe. Mom’s leg was broken in four places, and the pickup’s driver died in the hospital. My first memory is the sound of the big crash.
My parents always told me I had nightmares as a little kid, and I never wanted to sleep alone in my room. I still don’t, but the nightmares are gone at least.
When I was five, a stray dog got into my backyard. My mom and dad heard the barking and ran out to save me, found the dog somehow got tangled in the fence around the tomatoes. Mom and Dad told me I didn’t cry or seem scared at all. I found out later that they checked the dog’s body after the whole event and it was rabid. Poor thing.
I’ve never had a dog. I feel like that just isn’t the pet for me. I never needed that companionship.
When I was eight, there was a house fire. I couldn’t get out, I was stuck in the corner of the living room. I remember the smoke, I remember hearing everyone screaming outside. But the firefighters came and took me out and I didn’t even have a little burn. My brother was burned all up his leg, and my dad still has nightmares, but we were okay in the end.
I don’t like candles very much. They’re distracting and dangerous.
When I was eleven, I almost got snatched in a van by a man by the school. My friend’s dad was there though picking her up, he was a police officer. The man was immediately cut down and arrested. He came from out of town, they’d been looking for him for years. He was taken in and he confessed to ten cases, one that the police didn’t even know yet.
I looked him up later, he was still in prison. I think he’s dead now. It doesn’t bother me.
When I was fourteen I got lost when camping. It began to rain, and I couldn’t find my way back to camp. I was missing for 9 hours, and all things considered I should not have found my way back. I actually didn’t! It’s actually a funny thing- I found the river, and there was a boat drifting down. It got loose from some fishermen, right, and they were looking for it with a radio thing. They saw me and I got scooped up and brought home. Grandpa said it was a miracle, I’d never seen him so happy.
I saw a map in the fisher’s boat, I was a few miles west of where I should have been. Almost in a completely straight line.
When I was eighteen I drank something toxic. Someone said it was an accident when I woke up. A little woozy, but I recovered quickly. What, the flavour? It was whatever.
That’s the second time I’ve told someone that story.
When I was twenty I slipped on ice and fell down the stairs outside. My neighbour saw me, she screamed and thought I cracked my head open. I didn’t.
“It was like you threw yourself down the stairs!”
When I was twenty three I fell off the roof. I was fine. Not even a bruise, it was like I landed on a pillow. I was being reckless, I shouldn’t have fa-I shouldn’t have fell, but I did.
We always loved heights.
Last year there was another fire. I walked out just before the front room collapsed. It spread to my neighbours’ houses and just kept going. It was honestly a huge tragedy, but nobody died. My roommates were even out of the house at the time, and I managed to wake up before it got too bad.
There weren’t any candles this time, at least.
I got mugged. A couple guys shook me down and one of them had a knife. I really, really tried to run, they got away. I heard someone found the one with the knife later, but never heard anything else.
It wasn’t my fault.
I’ve always been told that I have a guardian angel. I might. I’m not sure, but I might. I just know it doesn’t have eyes.
The sea of greens and reds filled the theater, bleeding a new dimensionality from the screen. Sounds flew, attacked your ears at every turn, every flicker of a frame. Captivating. Mesmerizing. You wonder why you hadn't seen this film before. In fact, what had you been doing before the poster caught your eyes? With its clashing colors and grotesquely stretched faces and sharp serif fonts, it drew, sucked you into the theater. Did you even buy a ticket? When did you enter the theater?
Didn't matter. A pungent stench crawled up your legs, tickling yet another one of your senses. It was striking, wasn't it? Electic visual murder from director Vestigulari… a Polish painter with no beforehand experience. Debut. Red splattered the seats and the viewers with a frothy helping of screams as accompaniment. Some has gotten into your eyes. You don't care to look away to wipe it off. It sears in. Pain and information; a few droplets on the edge of infinity.
Teeter-totter. A thin gate between the bounds of impossibility and incomprehensibility.
The drop falls. Red seeps into the flesh, setting it alight. There are yells behind, a clamoring for release, the rattles of locked doors. Pay the non-believers - no, the unworthy - no heed. You will understand as no other will. You've got to look away… you must. You dare not look away. Your body will understand. And it does, more than any body has ever understood. Your bones crumble, flesh melts, divinely rearranges itself. You shed your former amorphous self in a rejection of lower ideocracy. Limbs, many limbs! The screen flickers white - impure, evil, lies, slander - before finally turning a heavenly, comfortable shade of black. The theater cloaked in darkness and the pitiful voice of nary a pure soul. You must spread understanding to the feeble.
You laugh, and you laugh, and you laugh, and you laugh, and you laugh, and you laugh.
The gates are open.
I always loved walkin' in the woods. The place I stay at is right on the edge of town, jus' 'cross the parkin' lot from the Nantahala Forest. So, some times, I jus' don' go to school an' instead I take myself a walk through them trees.
Ma, she din't ever like that I went and did that. Wasn't jus' 'cause I'd not be going to school or nothin', tho' she din't like that none neither, jus' that there was somethin' about them trees that always got her feelin' somethin creepy-like. She don' tole me once that erry time she has to walk outside and look out over them hills, she gets a shivver down her spine or somethin'.
I ain't never ken that. Them trees was jus' like home, yanno? Jus' another place a boy like me could go run an' play.
Never tole her about Scraggins tho'. She'd've prolly worried 'bout that one, an' she done had too much on her plate already, what with me and the younguns. I's always gon' be real proud of her, an' all she done for us. I tried to help, but… ain't a lot a teenager can do when it comes to raisin' a batch of kids an' makin' sure food's right and schoolwork's done and, and, and. I jus' wish ma' din't drink so much, yanno?
She managed, tho. Mebbe the drink helps. I guess that's why she din't ever be so good on me goin' an' escapin' to them woods, now'n I think on it.
So, I go. Me 'n Scraggins. Well, we don't be goin' far. Scraggins, he just hangs about in his clearin', an I go there when things is bad, an' I talk to 'im 'bout the shit back at the house. He's a good listener, Scraggins is. Ain't so big on the talkin' part, he jus' sorta nods at me when I'm jawin' 'bout somethin' or 'nother.
When ma gets too much inna drink, she says stuff she don't really mean. Sometimes, more 'n more these days, she gets to throwin' stuff. Says I should listen more'n talk less.
Scraggins says I shouldn't be so mad at her when she does that. Well. Mebbe' he's right. But mebbe he's jus' sad he don't hear her yellin' no more like I do.
I keep thinkin' maybe one day, maybe one day I will jus' walk out and stay away.
Join Scraggins, up there on that branch. Mebbe, when I's there aside him, I will be a better listener too. Scraggins, he don't talk too much, on account of that rope lookin' so tight 'round his neck. Mebbe that's why he's such a good listener.
He's always sayin' he ain't so sad no more, an' I think I unnerstand that, finally. He's a much better pa now, anyways.
Ma ain't hittin' him no more neither.
This is not a ghost story, but it's a true story, for what that's worth.
It's also a story that's hard to tell to people from outside my city. I heard this first from a retired city planner, on whom the implications were largely lost; I'll try my best to adapt it for you here.
The highway that runs down the east coast of our island is built on new land. Everyone knows this; our parents have told us this. Driving from west to east towards the airport, they'd tell you that to the left lies the old shore, buried under the new condominiums. To the right lies the false shore, on which the government has built a beautiful seaside park. And beneath the rumbling highway: a hundred million tons of sand and rock, where there once was gaping sea.
That city planner asked me: have you ever heard of Bukit Bedok? A strange question to ask a local. The word 'bukit' conjures the rolling terrain of the west, its quarries and forested peaks: Bukit Timah, Bukit Batok. Our island's east is as flat as flat goes. I asked him: where's this hill that you speak of?
Truth is, the east once had hills, rolling out towards the sea, ending in a set of red cliffs so stark that a village was named for its thundering waters. The land must have been beautiful, then, for mosques dotted the valleys, and the sound of their drums at dawn gave rise to the area's namesake: be-dok, be-dok. One hill must have stood out to warrant the title of Bukit Bedok — it's recorded as the site of an obscure wartime massacre — though by now we can only guess, for those features have been lost to time.
Lost — because they started digging in 1966, a year after independence. The new city needed new land; the new airport needed a new highway. They dug out the forests with excavators, then dug out the hills with great bucket-wheeled machines. Conveyor belts, running twenty-four hours a day, carried the broken earth to sea. All the while, headlands sprung up along the new coast, trailing new shores; basins were drained; sediment filled the seabeds. This was how the city grew.
By 1977, the hills were gone.
The digging continued, though. By luck, it was discovered that the hills had been resting on an immense quantity of sand: sand for concrete, for the great highway that had yet to be built. So they mined sand by the kilotons, hauling it up from the ground into immense dunes that sat by the highway behind tall metal fences. They dug and they dug until they had enough for the new highway and the new roads that led from it. They even had some leftover for the beautiful new flats. This was how the city prospered: by turning itself inside-out.
When they were done, all that was left of Bedok's hills was a hole. Seasons passed, and the hole was filled with water. The city planners put a park around the hole and called it Bedok Reservoir.
The man who told me this story paused at this point, and asked us if we had heard of the reservoir in the news.
See, a few years back, they found the lower half of a man in the water. He had been reported missing for a few months; it was believed he had committed suicide. I remember his mother on the news, recounting how she had identified him. I remember how her voice tightened when she mentioned the reservoir, how she had searched for him in its woods. I wonder much she had cried.
There would be five more bodies in the water that year.
I don't believe in ghost stories, but I believe in echoes. Sometimes these come in the form of scars. The hole left by a drum-beating heart. The smothered red cliffs, and their sea.
There isn't an ending to this story. I don't think there'll ever be one. They've put a fence around the reservoir since then. Put up signs as well; suicide hotline and all that. So far, I think it's been working. But the damage has been done. Something of a psychic scar persists: I know locals who can't help but suppress a shiver at the mention of its name. Who knows? Maybe in a few decades, all this will be forgotten, and a little of something can start to heal again, given time.
For now, we have these stories and their telling. I hope you've enjoyed this one.
I didn't mind bugs growing up.
I mean, I didn't like them, mind you. But growing up in South Carolina it was kind of unavoidable. You learned to live around them. Squish them if you could, get the heebie jeebies if they ran away too fast. I'd always chuckle a bit when people from out of state complained about the size of the flies they saw. Like they had anything on us.
I think the palmetto bugs were the weirdest. They were the biggest, at least. But I never saw them in the daytime. I don't think they liked the light. It was only nighttime that they'd come out. I stepped on one once, by accident. Spent the next 10 minutes cleaning off my feet. Another time I turned on the kitchen lights to get a drink of water and they'd just freeze in place for a minute. Like they knew they were caught doing something. I'd freeze too, I guess. A standoff. Then they'd scuttle back into wherever - sometimes under the fridge, sometimes under the dishwasher. I didn't like it, but they had their territory and I had mine.
There was one night though, I think it was just after senior year of high school. Real hot summer night, the sort of thing you get in South Carolina. Dark and humid in the evening. Fan was broken and dad always kept the AC real hot. I had seen one earlier that day, in my room. First time, and I missed him. He skittered into a pile of my clothes, and by the time I got the flip-flop he was under my desk. I lost sight of him. Spent the rest of the day watching out.
I think it was 1 or 2 AM - I remember the cicadas were still making noise. I didn't sleep well that night, I never did when it was that hot. I got jerked awake by something stuck in my throat. I kinda coughed it out and it hit my leg before crawling away.
I didn't sleep the rest of that night. Got real into brushing my teeth though.
I moved up to Maine for college shortly after that. Got a nasty summer cold and it left me with a cough that wouldn't go away.
I decided to stay in Maine, been here for the last decade. Good summers, but the winters are cold. I don't see that many bugs up here. House centipede, here and there. Except for the palmetto bugs. There's more of them every year, I swear. Still wake up coughing in the night. I hate summer colds.
Your body is in rebellion.
You can’t see the war being waged against your own organs, only feel it. But the trained eye can reveal what goes on under the layers of skin.
Your extremities are the outskirts of the battlefield. The digits of your hands tingle and twist under the pressure of their own existence. Then, after a short period of insufferable waiting, they begin to crack. Your limbs become fault lines, each joint and bone breaking into spasms before snapping in two like stale bread. The jagged edges of your own bones slash your blood vessels and muscles, forcing fluid into your channels. From the outside, you can see bruises – you have no idea how deep the damage runs.
The fractures travel up each limb, intersecting into your torso; specifically, your spine. The twenty-three discs that form your vertebrae thrash and convulse, writhing independent of each other. Enough twisting, and your spinal column snaps cleanly in two. You can no longer feel anything below the chest; consider this a blessing.
Your bones are only the first casualties – certainly not the last. As your bones commit osteocide, your immune system lights up like a Christmas tree. Foreign contaminants, flooding your veins and arteries, enemies to be violently removed at all costs. K cells – killer white blood cells – pour into your blood vessels and begin violently consuming other cells – your own cells. Your T cells have betrayed you, and have left your immune system to destroy itself from the inside out. The lymphocytes will attack and consume each other until nothing is left (your bone marrow is too busy leaking out to replenish their forces), leaving you completely vulnerable.
Meanwhile, your wet organs are fighting their own battle. The mass of activity from your immune system has raised your internal temperature to scalding. You feel nauseous and lean over the bedside to vomit into a bedpan. Your stomach has panicked and attempted to eject its contents upwards. The burning sensation in your throat is your own stomach acid, smearing your esophagus and chewing through your mucus lining. The heat causes a cascading failure of organ systems – massive organ shutdown.
Your nonessentials are the first to go. Your spleen simply stops functioning, careful not to rip its papery capsule. The kidneys similarly cease function. If you were to urinate, you would find more red than yellow. The cascade continues, putting your gallbladder, colon, liver, and stomach out of commission. Your appendix nearly bursts. But they’re ramping up, heading upwards… to the mother of organs.
What little is left of your immune system tries to prevent the inevitable, but they don’t know how. The rest of your body has obliterated itself, and there’s only one place left to go. The temperature inside you is still increasing – your cerebrospinal fluid is boiling. Your brain is being cooked inside of your skull. But its structural integrity has failed, and the grey matter isn’t going to last much longer.
With a disgusting, wet pop, your brain expl-
There must have been some sort of mistake.
This is wrong. It was different this time. That can't be, so something must be wrong.
Oh, no. No no no no no.
What can this mean? What is happening?
Things have always been the same. Around and around, since as long as I can remember. I have no idea how many times the cycle has occurred. There isn't any meaningful way of counting.
Over and over. Always the same. The beginning, then pain, then more pain, steadily increasing in intensity. Then a sudden and violent end. Then back to the beginning again. The cycle. That's just how it is. That's how it was always going to be. A hypnotic ouroboros of suffering. It's all that I've known.
Until it changed.
Confusion, as the cycle is interrupted. Even the pain has stopped. A bright light. Different sounds.
The absence of agony torments me. The dread of anticipation. The despair of having my surrender rejected.
This is wrong.
I ever tell you about little David Warner?
No, not the pizza guy, that's another story - I'm talking about back when I lived in California. Yeah, when I was with Carol. You came to visit one time, remember? Little house on Maple Lane?
That's the one.
This was just pre-divorce with Carol, so we weren't talking much - and when we did talk to each other, we were wishing you didn't. Not a good, uh, not a good atmosphere in that house, I'll tell you that right now. I was taking any excuse to get out of there for a couple of hours, taking Maxie to the park and shit like that.
So, uh, about five months before me and Carol finally admitted it wasn't working anymore, Maxie gets this baseball phase. It's crazy, you know, how fast kids get into stuff? One day, he couldn't give a shit about baseball, the next it's all he talks about. Crazy. It's like I've got an encyclopedia sat across the table for me.
I figured, hey, if the kid likes it, might as well do something with it, and I start taking him to this local Little League not far away. Bunch of kids his age who're all just as wild about the game. They all suck at it, sure, but it's at that age where it's cute instead of sad.
A month or two of that goes by, dropping him off and picking him up, and a - uh, an issue comes up because the cops pick the coach up for dealing drugs. Just weed, nothing too serious, but he definitely isn't working with kids after that. Kids weren't too broken up, he wasn't that good at his job anyway, but one thing leads to another and I end up getting asked to coach Little League.
I say 'sure, why not' because - like I said - anything for a few hours away from Carol. Everything's going pretty well at first, the kids are actually learning to play baseball, I'm having a good time for the first time in what feels like forever. Good times all around, you know? But then, uh, things get - got a little weird.
There's this one kid - David Warner - and, and I know I said these kids sucked at baseball, but David Warner sucked at baseball. I don’t mean it in a mean way, but he was just bad at the game. Wasn’t his fault - apparently he had some stuff going on with illnesses - but he wasn’t any good. Shame, ‘cause he tried. God did he try.
It was Little League, anyway, so nobody really cared that much. We just let them get on with it. But then, uh, then one day things change. Suddenly David Warner’s doing really well.
Now, let me, uh, let me just make sure I’m saying this right - I’m not saying David Warner was suddenly good at the game. It was more like everyone else was suddenly bad at the game. Pitchers throwing with the aim of a blind cow, batters swinging slower than molasses, that kind of thing. All of a sudden everyone else was worse than David Warner, so he was - well, not the star of the team, but the best of the worst.
My first thought was that they were doing it to make the kid feel better; I thought it was sweet, you know? What’s the word, uh, precocious? Something like that. But, uh, after a while it was obvious that wasn’t what was happening. Kids getting frustrated, quitting, but ol’ David Warner still standing there in the outfield with the biggest grin on his face. Like he knew what was going on.
I’m…
Sorry, just need a second.
One day, uh, I’m watching them - and, and I swear I wasn’t on drugs or anything, or drunk - the ball’s flying and David Warner’s stumbling to get it, and I, uh, and I … I see some shit. I see some shit.
There are people - no, not people, there are things stood all around the field. Things, like, six foot or more, but all hunched over like someone had snapped their back over their knee, all shambling-like. They were, they were white, like chalk-white - and I swear this happened - and they had wings, feathered but all twitchy, like - like bug wings, you know? Like a fly?
They’re stood around the kids playing, like leaning right in to look at them - creepy as, well - grabbing this one kids arm as he’s swinging the bat, pulling the backs of these other kids as they’re running for the ball, slowing them down - and they’ve got this awful blank eyes, like milky white like they’re blind, but way too big. Like the size of baseballs themselves, you know?
And there’s this stink like burnt-out lightbulbs.
I scream, because I mean, come on, of course I do, and one of them looks at me and it grins with all these smooth white teeth, like baby teeth. And it waggles its - its eyebrows, like ‘look at me’, like … I don’t know.
And then I pass out - passed out. I didn’t do Little League after that.
Huh? What were they? Well, anyone else would probably say it was a hallucination, but I’ll tell you what I think. What I told the doctors when I woke up in hospital, what I told the cops when all they could find of little David Warner was his tongue and part of his jawbone.
There were goddamn angels in that outfield.
Old advice, and long forgotten, by the time I found the beautiful old-fashioned comb. Mother of pearl? I'm not sure what that even is, but this comb was… iridescent and shining clean. Cleaner than the path by the riverside where I found it. Some old-fashioned design and sitting on a rock, forgotten or dropped, like.
My girlfriend, at the time, she had the longest hair, and so a liking for nice combs and so on. I looked around a minute and, seeing as nobody was there to claim it as theirs, I took it and went on my way home. She loved it, of course, and threw her arms around me not even forcing me into the shower first, as she usually would after a day of work.
Well, now, that night. The dog wouldn't stay out - the big fella we had at the time, a german shepherd pitbull mix! Tough lad! - and I can't say I blame the poor bastard; I heard noises I can't rightly describe and I'd say he heard them twice as loud, being a dog. Screams rattling the windows but no words and not in fear or grief but… anger. As if someone was crying in rage louder than the wind on a fierce night. The windows were looking to come loose and the door too, the dog hiding under the bed like a wee pup. A terror.
Didn't sleep a wink and neither did the girlfriend. Hens were dead out the back the next day and the goats… it doesn't bear talking about. She ran off to her friend's the next morning, scared and crying, leaving the comb. Called me later on and told me she'd not be back that night and to put the comb out of the window once it started up again with something and absolutely not with my hands on their own or it would take them. Wouldn't listen to reason. And a good thing too.
It started up again the second night, dog hiding under the bed, windows and doors fit to fly out of their frames, screaming as you never heard, the whole thing, and I took a shovel, put the comb out a window, waited a moment, and pulled about two thirds of a shovel back in.The head was taken clean off. It laid off a bit then and didn't start again the next night. Poor dog was never quite the same and I had to buy my girlfriend the fanciest shiniest comb possible to make up for all of that.
As for me all I'll say is if you see a comb by the side of the road, you leave it alone.
I tapped the play button and set my phone down, hands trembling. The song blared to life immediately, with none of the lag that I was used to with the old vinyl player. It was nice, I supposed, not having to change out vinyls, but I missed the charm of the old one. Still, things change with time.
"Just like us, Martha. Just like us." I whispered, hobbling over to the seat where my wife sat. She hadn't heard me, of course. Martha's hearing and sight had really gone in the last few years, and mine was probably soon to follow hers. How old we had become! I tapped her on the shoulder and she turned, leaning into me. Her smile was stretched wide across her face when she felt my touch.
Well. Some things never change. I smiled in response, giving my best bow.
I helped her up out of the seat as the music began to swell, taking her hands into mine. I began to move, slowly at first, a little creakier and stiffer than I would have liked, but moving nonetheless. My feet knew better than I did though, and without much prompting, they began tracing out the same steps and patterns they had carved out every year on our anniversary. Our wedding song played in a tinny sounding tone from my phone, straining my hearing, but I didn't really need it. Some things never change, after all.
Martha was almost as stiff as I was, but she knew the steps in her sleep. She had always been a better dancer than I was, but she was graciously slow as I got back up to speed. We smiled at each other as we spun in a slow, sweet circle, the same way that we had done every year for the past 63 years. God, I could still remember the feeling of that first dance. Martha leaned into me, and I into her, a comforting and familiar embrace that made me close my eyes, just for a moment.
And there we were, just as I had remembered it 63 years ago. The tinny beat from the phone was replaced by a full orchestra, playing the waltz that would come to be our wedding song, our surroundings replaced by the beautiful church we had been married in. Faces stuck out in the crowd, people I hadn't seen or head from in years, our parents, and so many more that I barely remembered at this point. They were cheering, clapping, smiling, and more, celebrating the first of our many dances to come.
And then I turned to her. God, how much we had changed! Gone were our wrinkles, our thinning hair, and stiff, creaky joints. Her skin was full and smooth once again, her hair long and falling to her waist, just as I had first seen it.
And her eyes. Oh dear. Those were the eyes that had stolen my heart.
She smiled, shyly and sweetly in the way that she had done in those days, before we came to know each other the way we do now. But I took her hand in mine once again, and kissed it, setting her cheeks ablaze with blushing. We leaned into each other once again, our feet no longer stiff and old, but young and lively, tracing out the same steps that we still knew to this day. The music swelled, the orchestra hitting the crescendo of the waltz as we danced a dance of sweet, delicious abandon, two newly-wed fools who would dance together until the end of the world.
The waltz's music began fading out, as I opened my eyes at the same time. It had lasted but a moment, but the memory was as precious to me as gold. Gone was the orchestra, the crowd of happy faces, and the church, to be replaced by just Martha and I. That was fine with me. That was all we needed, after all.
I was panting at this point, the exertion of the dance having taken its toll on me. I hobbled with Martha over to the bed, and helped her down onto it. She had even less energy than me nowadays, and probably needed to lie down. I settled down on the edge of the bed, letting my breathing come back to normal, before turning back to Martha.
She was still as beautiful to me now as she had been that day. Some things never change. I leaned over, and stole a kiss from her as she laid in bed, leaving her smile as wide as ever. I stayed there for a few moments, stroking her hand, before I finally stood up.
I closed the lid carefully, being sure not to wake her. After that, I gently slid her coffin back into the hole, and covered it back up with dirt, making sure to pat it down carefully so as not to wake her. Finally, I simply knelt on the ground, and placed a hand on her headstone.
"I'll see you next year, Martha." I whispered, my throat hoarse.
Some things never change, after all.
I didn’t notice the bugs until there were hundreds of them in the room.
Fortunately, they were all concentrated in one area, specifically a potted plant I’d almost forgotten about after someone in the family gave it to me as an obligatory Christmas gift. The plant had been dropping leaves and looking a little droopy for weeks, but I didn’t take a closer look at it until there were just stems left.
I saw the spots first, little moving specks of yellowish white with tiny tiny legs scurrying around the stems. Moving slow enough to catch, but fast enough to disappear out of view if I turned my back. Each stem had dozens of little bugs crawling on them, but from two steps back they were essentially invisible. Most of them looked like grains of dust, but the larger more mature ones were almost brown in coloration, enlongated, with tiny antennae and many legs.
I spent about an hour with a few pieces of scotch tape, manually picking up the bugs off the plant. For some reason, in my mind, I felt like that was less hassle than just throwing the plant out. Maybe there was still some sentimental value to it in my subconscious.
The next day there were only a few bugs. I still picked them off with some tape.
The day after, I forgot about the plant because the air conditioning unit in my place was making strange noises. After a cursory scan of the manual, I decided to call in a technician to fix it. Eventually.
The day after that I remembered the plant again… and the bugs were back. More and more tiny little specks, clustered closer together this time, and wiggling around the plant stems that were, once again, still green and almost normal-looking otherwise. I used more pieces of tape to pick up the bugs. When I held the tape up to the light, I saw that instead of the five or six specks I’d usually nab off the plant, there were tight groups of ten or so all over the tape. I went back with a larger piece of tape. Still more tiny little bug specks, squirming around. It took me two hours until I was satisfied with how many bugs I had removed.
The day after, my air conditioning unit was still making weird noises. I took a closer look at the vents… and there were more of the little speck bugs sprinkled along the wall. Writhing around. So small that it wouldn’t take much effort to pretend that they weren’t there. But I hated knowing that the longer the were there, the more they would multiply, so I took a swatch of masking tape and took care of that wall full of bugs. They were still moving on the tape, so I folded it over and crumpled it up before throwing it out.
The next day I had both the plant and the vent to worry about again. I didn’t understand why the bugs kept coming back, but I had plenty of tape, so I just kept sticking and peeling the tiny little bugs off of both locations. It wasn’t ideal, but that was my life now.
The next week, the coworker I hate tried to talk to me during break. They were right next to me waiting for the staff microwave, and I didn’t have much personal space, so there was no choice but to look at their face.
The bugs were on them too. I saw the tiny specks moving around at the corner of their mouth, tightly concentrated near the chin but crawling slowly outwards over their face towards their ears. The coworker I hate didn’t seem to notice, but would scratch their chin repeatedly and jostle the little tiny bugs, spreading them onto their hands and wiping the little creatures over their forehead and cheeks. I left the conversation as soon as I could.
When I made it home, I had to put an anti-itch cream on the bug bite I got last month, which had swelled up and burst and I thought was finally healing over. I went to apply the cream and noticed that my hand had something moving on it, something small, something numerous.
There were bugs on the bite too, stuck in the cream, starting to scuttle over my hand.